I haven't read the whole thread but a few people recommended the YMCA for summer activities. There is also the Boys' and Girls' Club in some areas. I know a few children who have gone there and enjoyed it.

Again not quite what you are looking for, but my niece is taking Russian from a native speaking tutor in the Lawrence area. (My niece was adopted from Russia and is seeking to learn her lost native language.) If it would help you to plug into a network of native speakers, I could see if my SIL feels comfortable sharing the name of the tutor, or if she has any other relevant leads. You could private message me if interested.

Here's a thread on studying Latin and Spanish simultaneously: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/556329-studying-latin-and-spanish-simultaneously-am-i-setting-us-up-for-failure/ (Don't worry, the thread says "just take certain factors into account . . . ") However you spread the instruction out over the years, your children are blessed to have this exposure, and they will have a great time seeing the connections between Latin and some of its descendants!

Sketches from Church History by S.M. Houghton would be well worth considering. It moves at a nice pace through the material, so you get through the centuries, yet would provide an excellent "spine" from which to go into certain eras or topics in more detail. http://www.amazon.com/Sketches-Church-History-S-Houghton/dp/0851513174 From the description at Amazon: This book outlines the thrilling story of the onward march of the Church of Christ from the earliest times to the end of the nineteenth century. It is not a dry-as-dust account of long-forgotten events and controversies, but rather a moving record of those who undertook the adventure of faith before us and through their courage and steadfastness, left an example for the church in every age. There's also a student workbook by Rebecca Frawley. http://www.amazon.com/Sketches-Church-History-Student-Workbook/dp/0851519520/ref=pd_bxgy_14_text_y For biographical sketches, Men of Purpose and Men of Destiny by Peter Masters are enjoyable glimpses into a wide variety of Christian lives, which, we shouldn't be surprised, often have startling beginnings. The biographies and sketches by Faith Cook would be excellent as well--she writes very simply. One of her titles, Singing in the Fire, sketches the lives of various Christians tested by adversity, including Charles Spurgeon's wife, who suffered chronic illness but was integral to his ministry. Cook is prolific, so there's lots more from her to discover. There have been some good books on the stories behind the great hymns. HTH!

Did you post it in the logic stage subforum by any chance? I've seen threads in that sub-forum remain in the forum but become invisible to searches of the whole site. But I think you are saying it is just. plain. gone even from where you posted it? That's even more alarming . . .

Exactly! I was just coming back to say--nothing ever HAS to be done five days a week. A program may say five days a week at such-and-such an age in order to complete the program in so much time. For an elective, there's no harm to making something two or three days a week instead and taking longer to do it. Only when you get to trying to do a connected subject like symbolic logic only once every week or two, with no contact with the topic in between even in the form of homework, will you have kids just plain forgetting everything in between and making the whole exercise fruitless.

Also, there are some classic and valuable books on that Ambleside list. Thanks for collecting it, thowell.

For easy logic/as little teacher time as possible, if that's part of your goal, I think your choice of Fallacy Detective to begin with is a good one, since it covers informal, rather than symbolic, logic, and does so with clear and simple examples. But logic comes in "informal" and "formal" (a.k.a. "symbolic"). If you want to keep things manageable for you in logic overall, I think you have three basic choices. This turned out long, so I'll just list them first. You can: --Stick with informal logic; or --Do a book that normally takes one year over two years instead, plus maybe start it a year later than usual; or --Assign a book to a special twelfth-grader as a self-study project. ___________ --One is to stick with informal logic and never touch symbolic logic at all. Symbolic logic really isn't any harder than math, but many people find it requires more of a mental change of gears than informal logic does. But then you'd miss out on the benefits of symbolic logic, which is especially valuable to any child who might go on to computer science, law, the pastorate, cultural leadership through writing (or as a homeschooling Mom!), or any other calling requiring clear thinking. But this is certainly an option to keep it relaxed. ___________ If you do want to cover some symbolic logic too, yet keep your involvement limited, then I think you have a couple of options. One is, you could: --Do a book that normally takes one year over two years instead, plus maybe start it a year later than it's usually taught I'm pretty familiar with one logic book, so I'll use it as a scheduling example. (It's my husband's--it starts with symbolic and ends with informal--Logic I: Tools for Thinking). While it works well in eighth grade with one teaching session a week--co-ops have done that--and can be completed in a year, for that to work, the teacher/Mom does need to become familiar with the book herself and be available to grade homework and answer questions. (She doesn't need to have a logic background, but the children will need her help.) And the children are involved not just during the one teaching session, but doing homework as well. Parental involvement goes with the territory when symbolic logic is taught at that age, no matter what book you choose. So, to keep it doable for you, you could do such a book over two years--in grades 9 and 10, say--instead of dong the whole book in grade 8 (let alone starting it in 7). Your children will be readier and so it will be easier for you to help them understand. But you would still need to count on learning the material yourself along with your children. ___________ As an alternative, if that is more than you want to do, you could: --Assign a book to a special twelfth-grader as a self-study project. You could try using a book that assumes no prior knowledge of logic on the part of the student OR the teacher, assign it to your kids in grade 12, and have them self-teach. I'd only feel comfortable trying that with a child who is a good reader, organized, motivated, responsible about assignments, and not scared of math (also symbolic). However, there is still a chance that you'll need to be more involved, if questions arise. They will come to you, because you're omniscient, right? But--I'm not looking at your kids' ages right now--by then maybe all your children are older and so the littles are not needing you as much, and you at that time might be able to join your oldest child in that logic adventure, after all. Much as I am a fan of logic, for boys and girls, most of us didn't get ANY in school--I had a few weeks maybe in grade 8, I think--so if you get to it at all, you are ahead of the curve and your children will benefit. I hope this helps!

This thread should hold some leads: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/555767-dedicated-poetry-writing-curriculum/ It has a too-long post by me in it about what I wish the OP would include if she writes us a curriculum, but for you, it also has lots of curriculum recommendations--programs that exist already!

By checking online reviews of your particular printer brand and make you will be able to find estimates of your cost per page. They will only be estimates, but they'll get you somewhere. Some of the geekier computer-gear review sites have this kind of information. Until you can buy a laser printer . . .

Hello Ewe, You're doing some great thinking and asking some important questions. Because really, how long you need to study Latin depends on what you want to get out of it, and then making sure your chosen program supports your own family's specific goals. But as for where you are in Latin right now, I think you've hit the nail on the head about parts of speech--not having those down first is definitely a hindrance, but certainly a problem you can easily fix by taking a break and solidifying some English grammar. It's helpful, before doing any program that requires translation, to make sure your children can identify not only parts of speech, but also one or two noun uses, such as the subject and the direct object, or the object of the preposition. If children haven't shown that they are ready for that type of English grammar, they will be lost when dealing with a Latin program that builds quickly into translation. A Latin program may explain English grammar, but still, children need to be ready, and the best way to make sure is to do some English grammar first. If you are already mid-stream with GSWL and don't want to completely pause it, then I'd suggest that in each new section, you check out what the underlying English grammar concept is, and pre-teach that concept, using English examples, before doing the Latin chapter. But since it's the summer maybe you can use this time, or use the beginning of the new school year, to solidify English before returning to Latin. You may also feel more comfortable with Latin programs that do more grammar explaining as part of the text. There are a number that do. You are right that French grammar is more like English grammar than like Latin grammar. Latin is an advantage in the study of Romance languages mainly in the area of similar vocabulary, and secondarily in the discipline of learning an involved verb system. But the heavily inflected noun system of Latin is more like the grammar of other inflected languages, such as Russian and Greek. Romance languages don't have "noun case" but Russian and Greek do, like Latin--and they are unthreatening to students of Latin! Also, the Latin advantage for English vocabulary needs to be actively supported, either with a roots program or by using a Latin program that includes derivative work, for best results. It sounds as if you are doing some great pondering about what your own family's language goals are, which will help you chart your course! P.S. Here's a recent thread on Why Latin that gets into some of the parallels between Latin and Russian, along with some of the more common reasons for studying Latin: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/550794-why-teach-latin/

That's one reason programs get dropped. A few others: --that particular student and that particular program are not a good fit, and the parent saw that and made a switch. --the program requires more parent involvement than the particular parent reckoned on. --the program was bought on a whim or in pursuit of a fad, and later the parent's priorities changed. --the student was not ready yet for the program, but will be later. And I'm sure there are more! Not every dropped program is a bad program for everyone. I think you have to know why it was dropped.

You have company. You and I might be tied. If you do send out for review, I hope you will understand the time frames better than I did. We sent some books out for review at a time when I was seriously ill (mold had grown, hidden, inside our walls . . . I was out of commission). My husband was doing what he could to sub for me. I appreciate his effort. In the end though, as far as our experience went, I had one understanding about what was going to happen, but something else took place. I thought the reviewers would have a longer time to work with our programs before posting their reviews. I expected the families to use, not just sample, the curriculum. The reviewers may have done the best job to be informative that they could have done given the limited time they had. But this limited time frame impacted the value of the reviews for everyone, in my opinion. Maybe in our case it was a communication problem arising from my not being in the loop due to illness. I want to be fair in what I say. Still, something to weigh carefully and understand well. Overall I'd say the result was more of a "look beneath the hood" than a review based on long-term use. I would have preferred the latter for families seeking information. Caveat emptor!

There are two things to look at: grammar topics and vocabulary. You can fast-forward through grammar topics in Latin Alive if you've already studied them in FF, but only if you also learn any vocabulary in LA that you didn't already learn in FF. Otherwise you'd be trying to move through LA without knowing all the vocabulary and in most books, that becomes, cumulatively, a really big problem.

Can I say it depends on the child? You could have one child raring to go and a shame to hold back at age 8 or 9, strong in English grammar and ready to benefit, and another who might do better waiting. It also depends on your priorities. Some are sure those elementary years should be used acquiring facts through chants and so on, for later use, and others find they or their children do better with facts presented in context, and so prefer to start Latin later. I think a lot of problems occur when the child and the program aren't well-matched. In particular, the pace at which a program accelerates is not always made clear or taken into account. A multi-year program should accelerate, since no matter how old you are when you begin, you'll be a faster learner two years later. But how fast does it accelerate? If you put a child into a program that accelerates faster than he or she can, things work for a while and then they fall apart. OTOH you can waste your time and your child's in a program that doesn't accelerate fast enough. Getting a good match and therefore a successful experience is really important.

Have you looked at Writing Tales? It has children re-write classic fables. It might be too easy for your daughter, but helpful for your son. Here it is.

I was going along thinking "well Chinese is so musical that it's different from most other languages so go ahead and try it" and then finally I got to your post which said . . . your daughter is very musical! At least for the oral dimension, she will probably thrive on Chinese and will greatly enjoy the fact that what to us sounds like the "same word pronounced four different ways" is actually four different words in Chinese. The pitch patterns are what distinguish them--each one has its own tune. Your idea of sneaking in a little English sounds great too. I hope this works very well for your daughter! Oh--and this is over on K-8! http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/556102-beginning-mandarin/

Tranquility, I'm glad that was helpful. At least for the Latin and French programs we were using back then, the vocabulary world was very different in the two progams. Even though I loved Latin just because it was a language, sentences like "the sailor is on the road to Rome" did not thrill me. I am glad that later I had the chance to do something about it! Have fun with it!

I saw your other thread and posted there. I had French and Latin together when I was a little older than your son and it went well. Here's from there: "I had a year of Latin first, at age 11-12, then started French and studied them together. Initially French confused me because it was easier! In my mind "foreign language" meant "inflected language" and at first I was puzzled that French nouns didn't change as Latin nouns do--even though English nouns don't change. But that was just at the beginning. Before long they were just two separate tracks and there was no confusion. I think it helped that French is pronounced so very differently from Latin. My "mind's ear" just filed all the vocabulary in separate places because it didn't sound the same. Certain areas where the grammar is the same were actually helpful: French adjective agreement? No problem, we have that in Latin, it's just easier in French. Big tables of verbs? Right, like Latin. Doing the grammar topics in a different sequence in the two courses helped and I think it probably also helped that the "vocabulary world" of the two courses was different. I learned "agricola" in Latin but still don't know the word for "farmer" in French. I learned "bakery" in French and still don't know what the equivalent would be in Latin. At times I would catch a French derivative of Latin word but that just made it easier to learn the French word. I think you could try this for a very language-oriented child. If you conclude you need to end the experiment, no harm done."

Years ago I studied Latin and French at the same time, but I was a bit older than your son. But it worked out well, so I'll share a bit about how it went in case that helps. I think the issues would be pretty similar for Spanish. I had a year of Latin first, at age 11-12, then started French and studied them together. Initially French confused me because it was easier! In my mind "foreign language" meant "inflected language" and at first I was puzzled that French nouns didn't change as Latin nouns do--even though English nouns don't change. But that was just at the beginning. Before long they were just two separate tracks and there was no confusion. I think it helped that French is pronounced so very differently from Latin. My "mind's ear" just filed all the vocabulary in separate places because it didn't sound the same. Certain areas where the grammar is the same were actually helpful: French adjective agreement? No problem, we have that in Latin, it's just easier in French. Big tables of verbs? Right, like Latin. Doing the grammar topics in a different sequence in the two courses helped and I think it probably also helped that the "vocabulary world" of the two courses was different. I learned "agricola" in Latin but still don't know the word for "farmer" in French. I learned "bakery" in French and still don't know what the equivalent would be in Latin. At times I would catch a French derivative of Latin word but that just made it easier to learn the French word. I think you could try this for a very language-oriented child. If you conclude you need to end the experiment, no harm done.

Have you considered Writing Tales? It's for children the age of your daughter and in it your daughter would be re-writing classic tales and fables (following the progymnasmata model).

These courses sound really interesting, so maybe your question about whether to write your own is already answered, but I got thinking about again this morning and decided to reply. I write poetry too, and have done some translation (from poetry into poetry). Thinking of what goes into making that possible sends my mind along a couple of tracks. I'm sure you know all of this as a poet yourself, but it intrigues me to think what it would be like to try to share it with a student . . . Hope you don't mind a little brainstorming from another poetry fan. Think of this as a kind of wish list from at least one other Boardie if you do write a program! Reading a lot of good writing is a baseline, I think. No one can produce good writing in a total literature vacuum. It can (and should) be different kinds of writing that children read, but writing where the writers use language with style and power. I wonder if a poetry program could include some reading recommendations (even prose reading recommendations). Reading a little bit of bad writing is probably a good idea too! Sourcing that could pose some interesting challenges (legal and tact challenges), but it could be really helpful to include. I think if we can't tell what's powerful and beautiful in someone else's writing, and what is hackneyed, we won't be able to tell in our own writing. If we can't recognize rhythm in someone else's writing, and inelegant patches, we won't be able to recognize where our own work is good and where it needs to be improved. A light hand would be needed here so as not to discourage young writers from even trying to write, for fear of writing poorly. But I think this background is key. I'm thankful that adults who knew what was good pointed me toward good writing when I was young, and helped me see what was good about it. A good vocabulary would help a child with poetry, so that he or she has more words to choose from. As much as possible learning new words in the context of good writing seems really important to me--so that nuances of usage, levels of diction, etc. can be picked up. Supplementing with a vocabulary program where the sentences are well-written would help too. I don't have any specific vocabulary programs in mind as good or bad, though in antiquity I was taught from (antique) versions of Wordly Wise, at a school with a very solid literature program, and at least one person in the class turned into a writer in the end. I'm sure there are other good choices, but that version did the job then. I wonder if a poetry program could include a focus on "what words might we consider using right here to express our idea? Why might we favor one word over another?" (Where the answer includes form issues like number of syllables, stress pattern, and final syllable, but also diction level, connotations, and so on.) As I think about what happens in my own mind when writing poetry, maybe this is obvious, but I find that being able to think of different ways of putting something is key. Often when I'm writing poetry I'll have an idea for the next line, but it doesn't fit the meter, say. Well, so I get it down, then rework it. And to rework it, I've realized that I end up rephrasing at a number of different levels. Replacing one word with another is one way; word order changes are another; recasting the thought at a higher level that rearranges the content of two adjacent lines is another. Etc. I would think this skill can probably be practiced in prose situations too, or in fun little exercises that fall short of requiring a whole poem--so they don't feel quite so pressured. Since you've written poems, if you save your own drafts maybe you could even assign some lines that were in need of improvement from one of your earlier drafts, saying "fix this" and maybe explaining what the problem is, and then finally show them how you DID fix it. (Gasps!) I think a lot of poetry analysis would need to be part of a poetry writing course. Helping students appreciate why a line is beautiful would be very important--is it the alliteration, the assonance, the internal rhyme, a deft touch with slant rhyme, the suitability of the meter to the thought, a delightfully unexpected but perfect word (e.g. "there's a certain slant of light/on a winter afternoon/that oppresses, with the heft/of cathedral tunes"--Emily Dickinson, remembered, I hope correctly, from 9th grade English--that's how much of an effect it had on me--the words "oppresses" and "heft" are magnificent. My apologies for not putting the capitals in). I think your wish to see funny poems and limericks and haikus included is a great idea--they are more attainable than some other forms (and types of thought), and including them would be merciful, especially to the boys. (And at this Board probably most people would be in hysterics over some great poems that mix English and Latin--one about a motorbus, the other about a hunt for a hedgehog, or some such--will dig up if needed--these could be a great reward to children for studying their Latin!) I think almost everyone can learn to versify and there are occasions, even just a birthday card, when that's a good thing to do. But if a child doesn't have the aptitude to write really great poetry, well, that only puts that child in the same boat with almost everyone. There is a quirky mental filing system that helps--a certain tendency of the mind to move sideways scanning the language for sounds and meanings--and it being a quirky gift, not everyone has it. So I think in this area more than in many areas of literature, it would be important to not set unattainable goals for the children. But I think parents will know which children to point this way and which not to. I wish you the best in your undertaking if you decide to do it. A worthy undertaking! Let us know if you do it! E. T. A. Whether you are religious or not, one source of great instructional examples could be different poetic versions of the Psalms. Many psalms have been rendered into poetry numerous times, with very different results. That could be a great way of showing how many possibilities there are for recasting ideas. You could show a prose translation (from a formal equivalence translation) first, then show a number of poetic renderings. E. T. A. Thanks to the other posters for the curriculum suggestions--they will be fun to check out.

Someone at this site may be able to help you: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/default.asp A serious blog for people teaching themselves all kinds of languages using all kinds of methods!

Maybe this helps to tie it all together--the charts and the syntax. I worked this out when I was writing for children: "The ending of a noun tells the noun's case. The case of a noun tells what noun jobs it can do." The OP knows, but for any readers who don't: In Latin we usually can't know the job a noun is doing from word order--as we usually can in English--and so we have to have another way of discerning what role a noun is playing in a Latin sentence. Enter: endings! So the bottom line is that we learn the endings for the different declensions because we need to be able to recognize a noun's case, and we need to know a noun's case in order to know what role the noun is playing in the sentence. Of course, some endings can denote more than one case, and many cases can do more than one job. So then we also need to learn the different "case uses" or what noun jobs a given case performs. Different programs take different paths through this landscape, so it can be hard to tell "how far am I from being done" when you are comparing one program to another or moving from one approach to another. (This is for Jennifer again.) But basically, you can check and see how many of the endings you know--that's where the charts come in--but you also need to see how many of the case uses have you learned--and that's where an actual textbook comes in. And I haven't even said anything about verbs, but that's a bit simpler. (One program might have you major on the forms, the chants, the endings, but put off case uses. Another may major more on case uses and less on forms. You'll have different areas you need to supplement to get "all the way there" depending on what approach your first program took.) HTH!

I completely agree. Charts and chants don't teach you how to use the noun cases. It's the case uses, especially, that make Latin so different from English and so much more like Russian or Greek. Even among grammar-translation programs, some tilt more towards forms and vocabulary, and some tilt more towards syntax. Syntax is where the fun and beauty are! But we still have to know the forms, hence the charts.